


a still, small voice says to us, something is out of tune

by OAbsalom



Series: tails, i'm afraid [2]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Aziraphale Does Temptations, Aziraphale is "just enough of a bastard to be worth knowing" (Good Omens), Temptation, Temptations Are Just Poorly Disguised Blessings, The Arrangement (Good Omens)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-29
Updated: 2020-03-29
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:55:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23381935
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OAbsalom/pseuds/OAbsalom
Summary: “As a matter of fact, I’m fairly certain I’m quitethemaster of the fiddle. Better than anyone, I’d say. Certainly better than you.”Aziraphale watched his words raise the hackles of the musician in front of him, felt smug satisfaction at his small victory, then hastily reminded himself a pious person shouldn’t ever get too self-congratulatory.“I’d be willing to wager something quite valuable,” the angel patted the case pointedly, “that I’m right about that."Or: Aziraphale goes down to Georgia as part of the Arrangement
Series: tails, i'm afraid [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1676125
Comments: 39
Kudos: 182





	a still, small voice says to us, something is out of tune

**Author's Note:**

> Installment 2 of the collected works of The Arrangement - wherein Crowley and Aziraphale trade off their responsibilities. Will update every three to four days in the series [tails, i'm afraid](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1676125).
> 
> Click [ here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23291683) for Installment 1!  
> Click [ here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23498869) for Installment 3!
> 
> (For the uninitiated to the reference, this fic is a retelling of The Charlie Daniels Band's folktale, [_The Devil Went Down to Georgia_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sh7BZf7D5Bw). I guarantee you'll enjoy it even more if you take 4 minutes to listen to the song.)

The principality Aziraphale was hot. And sticky. And downright dismayed that he’d had to slip off his old overcoat to fold it over an arm. Indignance shrouded him instead, the staunch refusal to remove his velvet waistcoat radiating from him like a challenge. Previously perfectly pressed shirtsleeves were rolled up to his elbows, sheets of paper that had been crumpled and reflattened too many times. Exhausted, overworn, infinite creases in his appearance.

The tour through this dreadful primitive land would only be another few days. Only a month stood between his enlistment on the campaign trail and now, but today and the day before had been more oppressive than the most sun-glaring of days he’d spent in Middle Eastern deserts. A couple more miracles in a couple more towns should lock this man in for whatever political marvels he was due to commit. 

As his time in the Colonies drew to a close, Aziraphale took stock of his… other… engagements. Crowley had been vague in his requirements, instead requesting general mischief and giving Aziraphale a quota of souls to collect for Hell. When pressed for more concrete directions, the demon dismissed him with a wave of his hand. “ _ NnnIiiiiii  _ dunno. Wing it. Be creative, Angel.”

Aziraphale had huffed then, and he was huffing now. Sin wasn’t his game, and he certainly didn’t care for “winging it.” Honestly, he had been focusing on other things for the most part and was feeling a little frazzled he hadn’t done a little more collecting as he went. His numbers for the trip weren’t exactly impressive.

It was for this reason that the music drew him in as he was wandering the countryside. Weren’t musicians more likely to… stray from the path, as it were? 

He watched him for a bit. The fiddler played from atop an old front porch; it and the house it was attached to had all but fallen down. The boards felt like they must be as old as Aziraphale’s shop - soft, worm-eaten, and grey - and the nails were rusted a deep dried-blood. At a cursory glance at his moral temperament, the young man seemed vulnerable to quite a lot, and the angel-turned-tempter thoughtfully thumbed through his sinful options. 

What a dreadful life his infernal friend led, plucking out the worst in a person from a long list of their faults to lay a tripwire at their feet. Even as the thought barely strolled into his mind, the principality twitched his nose in annoyance at the absent demon’s would-be response - it was just a job, after all.

When he'd settled on a sin and sorted the plot, all that remained were demonic theatrics. He channelled his best Crowlean drama and leapt onto a stump near the porch. Hope welled hesitantly in his breast that it was as graceful as his friend would have been, but suspicion sneaked pink behind his ears it had not been. His thespian played on regardless.

“I say, young man!” he shouted as loudly as he could over the music. The bow came to a sudden halt with the screech of steel in a car accident. “You’ve got quite the talent there!”

“Why, thankee stranger!” the target said, looking impressed with himself, “I reckon I do.”

“Yes, quite.. quite the talent…” He let his thoughts trail off in faux contemplation, looking him up and down from his pedestal. It was hopefully just enough rope to get tangled up in the fiddler’s curiosity. “I’ve got an interesting proposition,” he posited finally. The man blinked at him. 

“You know…” He delicately climbed down from the self-made memorial of the long-dead hickory, and his lap was suddenly graced with a solid black case, the distinctive shape of an hourglass prominent in its form. The young man’s eyes widened at the miracle and swung a few times between Aziraphale’s face and the object he was holding. 

“What the hell is this? Well I be if the Devil himself ain’t in my yard!”

_ Americans. You’ll hop straight over Heaven to get to Hell every time. _

The angel fluttered his eyes in annoyance but didn’t deign to correct the mistaken chap. He knew ignorance meant no offense.    
  
“I’ve also been known to play quite the  **_jig_ ** in my day. I’ve even taught some of the most famous players man has ever known.” This wasn’t altogether a lie. Who did they think taught Nero his tricks? Maybe not to madly ignore his countrymen as they died - Aziraphale strained his neck in a grimace at the thought - but the  _ fiddling _ had been his. 

The musician cocked his head to the side, inviting Aziraphale to continue, and the angel saw his demon friend’s sardonic patronizing written all over the expression. The ink of it was dripping ultracrepidarian from his face. Perhaps he was going to enjoy this a little more than he had any angelic right to. He licked his lips and punctuated the gesture with a smack. 

“As a matter of fact, I’m fairly certain I’m quite  _ the  _ master of the instrument. Better than anyone, I’d say. Certainly better than you.” He watched as the hackles raised on his mark, felt smug satisfaction at his small victory, then hastily reminded himself a pious person shouldn’t ever get  _ too _ self-congratulatory. “I’d be willing to wager something quite valuable,” he patted the case pointedly, “that I’m right about that. An original, straight from Stradivari’s own hands, perhaps?”

“Stradi-- what?”

It was Aziraphale’s turn to blink. He looked at the beaten violin hanging from the man’s grip. 

_Right._ **These** _people. Talent and culture don’t always overlap, do they?_

“Ah - Er. What would you consider to be the most valuable v--  _ fiddle _ one could own?”

The man considered this quandary for a moment. “I reckon I’d say one made of solid gold.”

_ Gold?? Gold. But that isn’t… It doesn’t work that w-- _

He thought of acoustics. He thought of resonance. He thought of every non-aurumnal quality a stringed instrument could possibly require to function. And then he thought, well, why ever should it matter. The physics don’t  _ actually _ have to be plausible to get the job done. But that also didn’t mean he couldn’t be miffed about it. On the inside.

“Certainly, certainly. Quite right.” The angel opened the case and turned the container around. The blazing shine off the stringed device would have provoked tears from a blind man’s eyes. He felt, more than saw, the avarice ringing from his target and once again pressed the heel of his foot into the self-satisfaction rising from the ground to meet him. “Well, er--- What should I call you?

“Surprised you don’ know, inna Devil supposed to know the hearts of men?”

Aziraphale seriously considered this with some measure of curiosity.  _ Did _ he? The fellow was probably right on some level. There had to be some kind of aura or-- Not the time, not the time.

“Perhaps I know your heart, dear boy, but I definitely do not know your  _ name _ .” 

“Johnny. You can call me Johnny.”

“Well then. Johnny. If you can play that, ah...” he tipped his head forward toward the worn and battered amalgamation of wood, glue, and steel, “those strings better than I, you can have this golden fiddle. But if you can’t…” 

Deep in the cinema of his mind, he played back the hundreds of times he’d watched Crowley entice. Aziraphale could certainly be enticing of his own accord in other settings, but he’d begrudgingly admit he always found it more effective to replicate the demon’s snaky charm for his own temptations.

He stroked the golden neck thoughtfully, then snapped his eyes up to meet Johnny’s. “If you can’t, I get to take your soul.” 

The fiddler had the jumbled response of a silverware drawer turned bottom-up on the kitchen floor. A shadow of balk and start and offense and interest and sly, sly grin passed over his features all in the heartbeat of a hummingbird. 

“Now, I know I shouldn’t play games with the likes of the Great Tempter…”

_ You are referring to two different people altogether, young man, completely separate individuals. Why must everyone mix those two up? _

“...but I reckon I’ll take you up on that bet. You’d best hold onto your ass, son, ‘cause you ain’t heard nothin’ yet.” 

The holy man flipped through his Concordance of Crowley, found ‘enigmatic’ and its corresponding passage, and made his best imitation of the smile he found on the page.

“Very well. The wager is  _ quite _ steep however, so it’s only fair I showcase my talents first. That way you’ll know what you’re up against.”

Intimidation, on the other hand, wasn’t a subject for which the angel needed any reference. He turned the hooks holding the bow in place, and it fell into his hand. A finger snap brought rosin to his grip, and he met Johnny’s eyes, lighting flame to the back of the implement as he dragged it across the horsehair. 

His soft hands, graced with evenly trimmed nails and tended cuticles, elegantly lifted the gleaming instrument from where it rested on the red velvet of the case. He tried not to betray his slight surprise at the weight of the thing. He had expected it to be heavy but had not expected the unique weight distribution of a small toddler hanging from the end of a conductor’s baton.

He perched his pinky finger precisely atop the bow frog as he tucked the fiddle under his chin, and hair met strings with a blaring friction. As surprised as he’d been about the weight, he was not  _ at all _ surprised at the horrid sound that emanated from the accursed thing. A screech, a hiss, the echoes of the screams of the damned languishing in the bowels of hell, and an F sharp all copulated to produce the tone that resonated through the sorghum-thick afternoon air.

_ This would truly be more convincing if I had some sort of accompaniment. It wouldn’t be fair to the poor chap... But I suppose none of this is, really. _

The angel quickly attempted to ascertain what appropriate instruments should follow a fiddle in this part of the world -  _ surely they have what all the other humans do and just use them wrong _ \- and simply settled on adding in all the common ones. Parallel thrums of guitars, basses, and drums rose from the ground around him. He wasn’t  _ entirely _ certain what kind of music Johnny was expecting to hear, but he made a rough enough guess and threw a bit of it all in the figurative pot. He sawed at the strings hard, recalling the mad emperor as he made the motions.

It was coarse and not at all eloquent. It was barely even an intelligible musical sentence in most places. But Aziraphale thought it was appropriately colloquial, if anything, so it could have been worse. When his “song” had ended, he was somehow even hotter and more damp than before and wanted to pant desperately from the exertion. Burning lungs tried to restrain themselves in his chest. A demon would keep his cool even in the overbearing subtropical heat; they do get it worse than this where they’re from. If only barely.

Johnny clapped slowly at the angel’s performance.

“Whell! Wadn’t that somethin’? Not bad, ‘specially with your friends adding in.”

Aziraphale looked around at the thin air before glancing back at the young man.

“You’re better than I suspected,” he continued. The angel couldn’t help but turn up a corner of his mouth, “but why don’t you take a seat and let the  _ real _ master learn you a thing or two.”

Johnny began to sing and lifted his fiddle to play along. Aziraphale marvelled open-mouthed at some of the words flying from the human’s lips. 

_ Does every fiddler I play with just devolve into madness? _

As for the finger work, there was no Vivaldi in it, no Chopin. But he’d heard something similar blossom in the Scottish Highlands not too terribly long ago, so it wasn’t altogether foreign. And at least it had a  _ tune _ , unlike his own. 

The man ended his solo with a flourish and brandished his bow wildly to his side. Unlike Aziraphale, he was not hesitant to steam out his exhaustion through smirking teeth. A madman anticipating applause. Genuine esteem for the musician’s talent settled into Aziraphale’s face.

“I must say, that was a good show, young man.” He sat Johnny’s prize on the ground before him, glad to have the weight off his soggy lap, and held his hands up in surrender. “A much better show than I put on, even with my, ah,  _ friends _ . Well done.” 

The glinting rays from Johnny’s ego shined brighter than the instrument at his feet. His eyes were wild, riding the high of his victory. The principality felt it was a good time to take his leave and so turned and began to make his way back the direction from which he’d come.   
  
“You just holler if you come back to town, Devil,” the young musician shouted after his back, ”I beat you once, you sumbitch, and by God I’ll bea’chu again.” 

Aziraphale frowned at the frankly disproportionate billingsgate being flung in his direction. Slowly, slowly, the last drops of his guilt from leading the man astray evaporated from their reservoir to join the sticky, heavy haze of the Georgian summer. He turned slightly to look over his shoulder, but didn’t raise his voice.

“Quite right, dear fellow, I’m most very certain you would.”

As he walked away down the road, gravel worn so deep into the dirt as to not even crunch beneath his feet, he considered picking his own violin practice back up. He  _ had _ been admirable once. Obviously much better than the farce he’d put on today. The briefest of urges to go back and show the boy what he was actually capable of was born into his thoughts, then died as quickly as it came. He eschewed the smile he’d borrowed from Crowley to employ his own instead - not one he’d admit to being outright wicked, but perhaps, just maybe, a little bit impish.

No, no. The angel wasn’t about to succumb to pride. After all, pride would get you sent to Hell. And the pride one gets from beating the devil himself? Oh my, no. No one would be coming back from that.

**Author's Note:**

> "Through pride we are ever deceiving ourselves. But deep down below the surface of the average conscience a still, small voice says to us, something is out of tune." Carl Jung.
> 
> Inspired by The Charlie Daniels Band's [_The Devil Went Down to Georgia_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sh7BZf7D5Bw)
> 
> Thank you to [Eturni](https://archiveofourown.org/users/eturni) and [JoseyxNeko](https://archiveofourown.org/users/joseyxneko) for keeping my Britishisms on track. <3  
> 
> 
> Click [ here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23291683) for Installment 1!  
> Click [here](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1676125) and subscribe to be notified of new fics added to the series!


End file.
